BRINGING MR. TOWNSEND BACK AGAIN. 63 



It often happened that a canoe would bring 

 along as trader and interpreter some renegade 

 whaleman who had deserted his ship and turned 

 " beachcomber," living among the natives, and 

 little better than the worst of them. This is one 

 of the strangest things about sailoring. A sea- 

 man's civilization will drop off like the cast skin 

 of a rattlesnake when he goes to live among 

 savages. 



While trading was going on — and it would 

 sometimes last two days at a stretch — the old 

 man would keep one of the brown-skinned, yellow- 

 haired, frizzle-headed tatooed natives on board as 

 a hostage. The old man had learned caution by 

 bitter experience. At Hivaoa we had found it by 

 no means easy to keep the natives from kidnap- 

 ping a red-haired sailor. They thought his scalp 

 worth more than his life. At Auhuga one of our 

 men was actually roasted and eaten. 



That was a lesson to remember. We never 

 took chances after that. But with a native host- 

 age on board the ship, we were not afraid to go a 

 long way in-shore in our boats, though we never 

 quite ventured to land. When the trading was 

 done and we were about to leave, we would send 

 the hostage off in one of our boats, and as soon as 

 we came within swimming distance of the shore 



